TCC Workshop Hosted by Nor Cal TCC Teachers, March 2019

Notes by Linda Braga, Castro Valley, California

Every year the Northern California T’ai Chi Chih teachers host a daylong workshop for students and their teachers in the greater Bay Area. This year, the workshop ”Learning Together” encouraged everyone to connect with others while exploring the form.

The hosting team decided to focus on three aspects: the polarity principle, the continuity principle, and pauses and stillness in TCC. Three movements were used for each principle, so that all participants could make adjustments in how they move.

The teaching strategy: Sandy McAlister would first talk about the principle (show and tell), then lead everyone in feeling that principle in the actual movement (guided practice) and then use partner practice to go deeper (feeling awareness and self-correction).

All three of these strategies are student–centered best practices, techniques that are the most efficient and effective way to learn skills and concepts.

Using partner practice, participants paired up, and began to move together, side–by- side while exploring the movement. They were encouraged to talk about the details of the principle and how it applied to this movement. Together they discovered what needed to be changed, adjusted and shifted so that the movement was not too big or too small, not too high or too low. But “just right.” This exploration of three movements gave each person the opportunity to share what they knew, to ask questions, to notice that something needed adjustment and to make those adjustments themselves while moving with their partner.

During partner practice students connect energetically and are influenced by the Chi field of both persons. That field can assist in helping the students to relax, to move correctly in perfect sync with the other person. Many students in class often remark that during partner practice, “they felt the Chi for the first time, and that they don’t know how it happened, but “they were moving in perfect timing with no effort.”

Another benefit of partner practice is that spontaneous joy arises when a person discovers how to move effortlessly. Partners begin to smile more and even hug their partner when done. Indeed this is “joy thru movement.”

PARTNER PRACTICE: Moving Side by Side

1. Pair up and introduce self. Stand side by side. The person on the left side leads first, when the left foot is forward; the person on the right leads when the right foot is forward. Select a TCC movement to explore.

2. When moving, give positive feedback. Begin to move in unison, together as one. The leader compliments the other person on how they are moving, encouraging them to stay with the pace and flow.

3. Make adjustments if needed. Leader makes gentle suggestions to other person so that they are moving together, in unity. Continue to talk if needed, but don’t stop moving. Eventually you will move together in silence.

4. Close with rest pose and debrief. Describe how it felt to move with a partner, what you noticed, what you learned. Thank your partner.

It is okay to disagree with the feedback you get from a partner, and to both check with the teacher for the correct way to move.

In closing the workshop, this handout was offered as a shared reading, done by four people before the final TCC practice.

The self must know stillness before it can discover its true song. ~ Ralph Blum

Concentration

While physical stillness is relatively easy to achieve, mental stillness is far more challenging. Our minds are used to having something to cling to. Usually that thought is random; we jump from topic to topic depending on external influences. Concentration meditation changes that, by providing a single topic on which we focus for a period of time. As we advance, the topic becomes increasingly narrow – and our focus becomes increasingly deep.

Quieting the Mind

When we are silent, our minds still may be full of worry and doubt. In quieting the mind we remove all the distractions of worry and doubt. We practice unhooking from them, detaching for a short period. This proves useful in daily life, too. Quieting the mind works in concert with concentration. Because it is very difficult to stop thoughts by force, we use concentration to guide them instead.

T’ai Chi Chih – Joy Thru Movement

TCC practiced with concentration – focused awareness on the soles of the feet – and quieting the mind, letting go, relaxing and moving in slow motion. Through the regular practice of focused awareness and flowing circular movements and then rest, one eventually experiences oneness, connection with all things and no thing.